After September opened with a whimper, we were prepared for a dull couple of weeks. It looks like we shouldn’t have been so quick to judge. The one-two punch of The Perfect Guy and The Visit have suddenly made the least interesting month of the year interesting, opening big and opening close enough to one another to make for an interesting race. In the slower movie months, weekends like these are rare treats.

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

1

The Perfect Guy

$26,500,000

$11,932

$26,500,000

2

The Visit

$25,688,000

$7,311

$25,688,000

3

War Room

$7,700,000 (-19%)

$4,675

$39,488,000

4

A Walk in the Woods

$5,100,000 (-38%)

$2,384

$20,356,000

5

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

$4,000,000 (-45%)

$1,510

$188,022,000

6

Straight Outta Compton

$3,900,000 (-55%)

$1,387

$155,522,000

7

No Escape

$2,700,000 (-51%)

$893

$23,976,000

8

The Transporter Refueled

$2,600,000 (-65%)

$757

$13,234,000

9

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

$1,900,000 (-45%)

$1,147

$43,130,000

10

Ant-Man

$1,550,000 (-46%)

$1,145

$176,077,000

Let’s start with The Perfect Guy, which narrowly edged out the competition to nab first place with $26 million. The weeks ahead will prove whether or not this thing has legs, but it found its audience and played well out of the gate. If it’s not already profitable, it’s close. Expect it to do similar business to No Good Deed, which opened this time last year. It won’t be a smash and it’ll tumble next week, but this opening should push it to a strong $50 million or so.

In second place, The Visit arrived on the scene with $25 million. That would be a strong start for any horror movie (found footage or otherwise), but it’s step one in what could be a comeback narrative for writer / director M. Night Shyamalan, who looks ready to escape from director jail following a string of critical and financial flops. The Visit looks like a wise move in retrospect — the audiences for a PG-13 horror movie aren’t necessarily old enough to bear a serious grudge against a filmmaker who spent the past decade burning his old fan base until they abandoned him.

The rest of the top 10 was mostly holdovers with varying degrees of success. At the top of the pack is War Room, which dropped a small 19 percent and grossed $7 million, bringing its current total to $39 million. Faith-based films like this can be unpredictable. Some vanish without a trace while others become breakout hits. This one is definitely the latter and it looks like it may have enough momentum to hit $70 million or so before calling it quits. That’s huge for this kind of movie.

In fourth place, A Walk in the Woods showcased surprising resilience, grossing $5 million in its second weekend for a $20 million total. Hollywood has a bad habit of underestimating anyone who is not a young, white male, and this is further proof that older audiences will come out for a movie (especially if Robert Redford is involved).

In fifth place, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation finally began to lose momentum, but not soon enough to keep it from that coveted $200 million mark. With $4 million over the weekend and a $188 million total, it will definitely reach its goal before the month is out. The big question now is whether or not it’ll have the strength left over to top Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.